Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

Though diminished by decades of pop-horror
incarnations, the vampire remains uniquely evocative of both
dread and fascination, horror and seductiveness. Monsters from
werewolves to Freddy Krueger may frighten, but neither victims
nor audience are drawn to them. By contrast, the vampire suggests
the horror of evil working on our disordered passions.

Artistic/Entertainment Value

Moral/Spiritual Value

Age Appropriateness

MPAA Rating

Caveat Spectator

A pioneering film in the silent German expressionist movement,
F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (not to be confused with Werner
Herzog’s 1979 remake) is almost unique in imagining a vampire who
is not darkly attractive, but corpselike and ghastly. Even so,
his dread fascination remains troubling; the hero’s wife seems
repelled but also mesmerized even as she seeks to destroy
him.

An unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
Nosferatu made few concessions to copyright beyond name
and place changes: Count Dracula became Count Orlock (Max
Schreck), Jonathan Harker became Thomas Hutter (Gustav von
Wangenheim), Mina Harker became Ellen Hutter (Greta
Schröder), and scenes set in England were moved to Bremen,
Germany (yet the vampire’s arrival by sea is retained,
illustrating just how superficial the changes are).

Perhaps unfortunately, Murnau’s film all but eschews the
traditional role of Christian iconography, of crucifixes and holy
water, in vampire mythology, retaining only a few vestigial
references (e.g., an allusion to the seven deadly sins).
(Herzog’s remake, which restores Stoker’s original character
names, also reincorporates Stoker’s religious imagery.) However,
it more than makes up for this with a major new contribution to
vampire mythology: It was in this film that the vampire was first
imagined to have a deathly vulnerability to sunlight.

Nosferatu, like Dracula, has been the subject of
numerous Freudian and sociological interpretations: The vampire
is sex; the vampire is the id or animal desire; the vampire is
wantonness; the vampire is venereal disease.

As applied to Stoker’s novel, at least some of these theories
may be worth exploring; but Murnau’s film fundamentally alters
the equation in ways that upends such interpretations.

First, it leaves Dracula’s wives out of the story, eliminating
the seductive scene in the book that leaves the protagonist
Harker in a debilitated condition. Second and more importantly,
it changes the rules about destroying vampires: Whereas Stoker’s
Dracula could be opening attacked with stakes and holy artifacts,
Murnau’s Orlock must be distracted till dawn by a pure virgin
surrendering herself to his thirst, even at the cost of her
life.

This is no simple metaphor for sex or animal appetite, for
Orlock is too obviously evil, destructive, and moribund; yet in
making surrender rather than resistance the means of destroying
the monster, the film hardly evokes wantonness or venereal
disease. The imagery resists allegorization, remaining simply,
unsettlingly, itself.

With Nosferatu itself now in public domain, the film has long been widely available on VHS and DVD — in mostly poor editions. The best version is the two-disc “Ultimate Edition” from Kino. With a high-definition transfer of a new restoration and an orchestral performance of the original 1922 score by Hans Erdmann, Kino’s latest version surpasses their own excellent previous edition as well as that a very good Image edition.

Obviously, any worthwhile edition should include tints (blue for night, yellow for interiors, etc.) rather than literal black and white, have an appropriate musical score, and use Murnau’s character names (Orlock, Hutter, etc.) rather than Stoker’s.